Page 130 of My Husband’s New Fiancée

Then I glance around the room.

“Where’s your Saint Bernard?”

She snorts softly.

“Youri spotted a car circling nearby. He went to check it out.”

Stephen walks in at that exact moment.

“False alarm. Just someone who got lost.”

A few minutes later Mara joins us, and I tell them about my suspicions regarding Gaspard Peltier.

“We’ll dig into it,” Mara says. “I’ll handle it.”

She pauses.

“Now that I think about it, I saw Bianca and Gaspard together yesterday.”

The atmosphere changes instantly.

“Gaspard could be the third man,” Valeria says.

Our eyes meet.

We’re finally starting to see how it all connects.

*

The evening after Mara and Stephen leave, I call Andrea to keep him updated.

By the time I hang up, Valeria is still on the phone. I watch her quietly. Her voice has softened, grown lighter. It’s the kind of voice reserved for the rare people who stayed when everything was falling apart.

Hugo, most likely.

When she hangs up too, I can’t hold back the question any longer.

“There was never anything between you two?”

She looks at me for a moment, as if the question both amuses her and touches her.

“No. Even during the most confusing moments… I was still your wife. And he’s in love with someone else.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He didn’t want to go into details. Just that she was the love of his life. That he did something unforgivable. And she left him because of it.”

The words echo a little too loudly inside me.

I move closer slowly before sitting across from her.

The silence that follows feels heavy. Fragile. I search carefully for my words, as though one wrong move could reopen the distance between us. But avoiding this conversation any longer would be worse.

“I have a lot to apologize for too.”

I pause.

“When you came back, I never gave you the chance to explain yourself. Worse… I tried to hurt you. I was hurting, and I wanted you to hurt too. I truly regret it.”